Foreign Relations Authorization Act, Fiscal Years 2010 And 2011

Floor Speech

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Mr. KIRK. Mr. Chairman, I yield myself such time as I may consume.

Mr. Chairman, on May 19, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change released a draft negotiating text. The draft, in part, calls for the removal of ``barriers to development and transfer of technologies from developed to developing country Parties arising from the intellectual property rights protection including compulsory licensing for specific patented technologies."

The American people need to know that those were code words, like ``compulsory licensing'' and ``technology transfer,'' that really mean allowing other countries to steal the American patents, copyrights and trademarks for anything related to climate change, efficiency or energy under the draft climate change treaty.

If the United States agrees to a climate change treaty that allows developing countries to seize U.S. intellectual property in this area, economic consequences for green-collar jobs would be devastated. American inventors now hold 50 percent of the world's patents on clean energy, 52 percent of the patents on fuel cells, nearly half of the world's wind patents, 46 percent of the world's solar patents, and 40 percent of the world's patents in the hybrid-electric vehicle market.

By 2030, industries with green-collar jobs could provide up to 40 million American jobs, and they could generate up to $4.5 trillion in annual revenue; but none of that would happen if a climate change treaty specifically allowed compulsory licensing so that Chinese competitors, for example, or European opposition could simply steal the intellectual property of a key U.S. green-collar manufacturer.

Now, one leading American innovator told me, If we lose intellectual property rights, capital markets die.

This industry needs all of the innovation we can muster to deliver on what the world and on what the U.S. needs. Shorting that will guarantee no new investments or breakthroughs for green-collar jobs.

Now, this innovator was none other than Gregg Patterson, the CEO of PV Powered--America's largest manufacturer of solar power inverter technology. Many of us remember this photo when then Presidential candidate, Senator Obama, visited Mr. Patterson last year, promising future green jobs and a green economy at his factory. Mr. Chairman, these jobs will not be created if we do not protect the intellectual property of American inventors and manufacturers. So far, the State Department has been very silent on this issue, but countries like China and India now put it at the top of their lists for negotiations in Copenhagen to ``relax intellectual property rights.'' That means to steal the innovations of Americans in green-collar areas.

This amendment lays down a marker. It says, if Copenhagen produces a treaty that allows the theft of U.S. intellectual property under compulsory licensing or under the weakening of IPR, the U.S. will not sign on.

Now, our Larsen-Kirk amendment is endorsed by the Solar Energy Industries Association, by the National Hydrogen Association, by the National Association of Manufacturers, and by the Chamber of Commerce.

I really want to thank Chairman Berman, Chairman Waxman, Ranking Member Ros-Lehtinen, and Chairman Rangel for supporting this very commonsense piece of legislation.

I yield back.

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